Method of and system for presenting a document, media player, information carrier and computer program product

ABSTRACT

The invention relates to a method of presenting a document comprising: requesting by a user for the document to be presented (S 200 ); determining if the document is present within a collection comprising those documents that are allowed to be presented to the user (S 202 ); presenting the document to the user if the document is present within the collection (S 204 ).

The invention relates to a method of presenting a document.

The invention further relates to a system of presenting a document.

The invention further relates to a media player comprising such asystem.

The invention further relates to an information carrier for use in sucha media player.

The invention further relates to a computer program product designed toperform such a method.

An embodiment of such a method and system is known from a, so called,“walled garden”. On the Internet, a walled garden is an environment thatcontrols the user's access to Web content and services. In effect, thewalled garden directs the user's navigation within particular areas, toallow access to a selection of material, or prevent access to othermaterial. An Internet service provider (ISP) may or may not allow usersto select some of the Web sites contained or barred from the garden.Although the walled garden does not actually prevent users fromnavigating outside the walls, it makes it more difficult than stayingwithin the environment. ISPs want to fence in users for a number ofreasons. For example, a walled garden can be used to prevent access toinappropriate Web sites for children. However, a common reason for theconstruction of walled gardens is for the profits they generate: vendorscollaborate to direct consumer's Internet navigation to each others' Websites and to try to keep them from accessing the Web sites ofcompetitors. Also, Web sites can relate to some other content provisionmechanism, such as a television broadcast or a DVD movie disc. The Websites form part of the main content provided by that other mechanism.The walled garden restricts the scope of Web sites to those sites thatare related to that main content.

It is an object of the invention to provide a method according to theopening paragraph that creates a walled garden in an improved way. Toachieve this object, the document is comprised within a collection ofdocuments that can be presented to a user and the method comprisesrequesting by the user for the document to be presented; determining ifthe document is present within a sub-collection of the collection, thesub-collection comprising those documents, of the collection ofdocuments, that are allowed to be presented to the user; and presentingthe document to the user if the document is present within thesub-collection. Documents can be identified and referenced by means of aURI or URL (Uniform Resource Identifier or Uniform Resource Locator;[IETF, RFC 2396, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt, August 1998). Thesub-collection can contain a list with all the Uniform Resource Locators(URLs) of the documents that are allowed to be visited or accessed by auser. By using such a list it can be checked if a user tries to accessor visit documents that are not allowed. Because of using the list, thedocuments themselves can still contain references, i.e. hyperlinks, todocuments that are not within the list. Traversing these hyperlinksenables de-coupling of the contents of a document from the walled gardenthat a user is allowed to visit.

An embodiment of the method is described in claim 2. By storing thesub-collection on a location, the sub-collection can be retrieved fromthis location. Furthermore, the sub-collection can be changed at thelocation itself.

An embodiment of the method is described in claim 3. By storing thesub-collection on an information carrier, such as a Digital Versatile(or Video) Disk (DVD), the content provider of the DVD can direct a userto the content provider's internet site. Furthermore, the sub-collectioncan depend upon the particular contents that's on the disc, for examplea movie, music, a video game or an other interactive application,thereby directing a user to internet documents related to the contentson the DVD. A further advantage is, that the content provider can setand control the scope of the walled garden, while player manufacturersmay remain offering their customers a device without limited web access.By storing the sub-collection onto an internet site, the walled gardencan be retrieved from the internet site and the content provider caneasily update the walled garden list on the internet site. By storingthe Walled Garden list at the broadcast station, the walled garden listcan be sent to a user together with the broadcast stream that describesfor example an interactive application.

An embodiment of the method is described in claim 4. If a user requestsa document that is allowed to be displayed, the interactive presentationcan continue playing. Thereby, allowing the user to continue navigatingwithin the walled garden as defined by the content provider.Furthermore, if a user requests to navigate to a document that is notwithin the walled garden the interactive presentation can discontinueplaying. In the latter case, the content provider can control that auser is not able to navigate to documents that are not allowed as longas the DVD of the content provider is playing.

An embodiment of the method is described in claim 5. By providing areference to the sub-collection, the sub-collection can be retrievedindirectly. Furthermore, only the reference needs to be distributed tothe users which saves memory space and the content provider can updatethe sub-collection at a central place for all users that have thereference to the specific sub-collection.

It is a further object of the invention to provide a system according tothe opening paragraph that creates a walled garden in an improved way.To achieve this object, the document is comprised within a collection ofdocuments that can be presented to a user, and the system comprisesdetermining means conceived to determine if the document is presentwithin a sub-collection of the collection, the sub-collection comprisingthose documents, of the collection of documents, that are allowed to bepresented to the user; and presenting means conceived to present thedocument, that the user requests to be presented, if the document ispresent within the collection.

An embodiment of the system is described in claim 7.

It is a further object of the invention to provide an informationcarrier according to the opening paragraph that creates a walled gardenin an improved way. To achieve this object, the information carrier foruse in the media player comprises an interactive presentation and acollection comprising those documents that are allowed to be presentedto a user.

These and other aspects of the invention will be apparent from andelucidated with reference to the embodiments described hereinafter asillustrated by the following Figures:

FIG. 1 illustrates presenting an application by a media player in aschematic way;

FIG. 2 illustrates presenting a document in a schematic way;

FIG. 3 illustrates a DVD player 316 comprising a system 300 according tothe invention in a schematic way.

Nowadays, more and more devices become internet enabled such as mobilephones set-top boxes, television sets, etc. This creates opportunitiesfor defining an interactive and internet-enabled disc format for DVDs(see DVD Forum news Vol. 15, July 2002) thereby opening thepossibilities for the content providers, such as movie studios, tocreate interactive presentations that, e.g., enhance the current videomaterial with additional content and other interactions such as quizzes.One such other form is the access of content at the content provider'sWeb site by enabling a user to browse that site. Preferably, contentproviders do not want the users to surf away from their site to other,sometimes competitor's, sites. Thus, they want to restrict the scope ofsites that can be visited to a so called “Walled Garden”. The WalledGarden's scope is dependent on which provider has created the disc athand. Also, the scope of the Walled Garden may change over time for agiven disc and preferably, the manufacturer of the disc player doesn'twant to limit the surfing capabilities of its player.

FIG. 1 illustrates presenting an application by a media player in aschematic way. Within step S100, the user selects a disc from hiscollection and loads the disc into his player. For example, A DVD playerinto which a DVD is loaded. The player reads the lead information anddiscovers it is an interactive disc. The player searches for the file onthe disc that describes the application, i.e. that describes thepresentation and interaction of the content items, which are usuallymedia items. Most of the content items, if not all, are also stored onthe disc. Other places can be on the internet. An example of such a filedescribing the application is a Synchronized Multimedia IntegrationLanguage (SMIL) document as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C), http://www.w3.org/TR/smil20/, August 2001. Another example is ajava program. Yet another example is a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)file extended with an ECMAScript. ECMAScript is a standard scriptlanguage, and the official standard, ECMA-262, was developed under theauspices of the European Computer Manufacturers Association.

In the following a SMIL document is referred to, when referring to anyof these application descriptions.

The player preferably includes a browser program that is responsible forthe control of the application. Through this browser program the user isable to control the course of the application. It enables the user to dosuch matters as pausing, resuming, stopping, fast forwarding, slowing,or slow motion, and navigating, like jump forward or jump backward, theapplication. Note, that these user actions do not represent interactionwith the application itself; that's described in the application (SMIL)document. An example of such an interaction with the application is theuser making a choice whether a character in the (interactive) movieenters a house through the main entrance or the back door. Anotherexample is the user “clicking” (or whatever response mechanism is inplace) an alert that pops up on the screen, causing additionalinformation to be presented to the user. That additional informationcould be a Web site, for example. The user can input his choices througha remote control or other known ways to provide input to a player.

The player loads the SMIL document in the player's browser, whichsubsequently starts the application. It is also conceivable that anexplicit user action is required before the application will start; theplayer will load and prepare, but awaits the user's commands beforestarting. The player takes care that the different content items arepresented or reproduced at the correct time and place as described bythe SMIL document.

The next step S102 occurs when the user interacts with the presentation.Within this step S102, the type of input of the user interaction isdetermined. It is distinguished whether the user interaction applies tothe browser program, or to the presentation. The browser program is partof the player. It is loaded with the application description (SMILdocument) that resides on the disc. The browser program executes therendition of the application. User input that controls the course of theapplication, i.e. applies to the browser program, is handled by thisbrowser program. For example, a stop command will end the furtherrendition of the application. User input that responds to what ispresented or rendered, i.e. user interaction, is handled according tothe application description. It is still executed by the browserprogram, but as part of the application rendition.

Within step S104, the user input command that controls the course of theapplication is handled; and within step S106, the user input responsethat controls what is presented or rendered is handled according to thedescriptions in the document leading to a corresponding change in thepresentation.

Next to controlling the course of the application, the browser programcan also load new application descriptions, hence offering the useranother presentation with other interactions. Such another applicationdescription can be fetched from the same disc, can be retrieved from theinternet, or can be “home made” by the current or other user. One causeof loading the browser program with a new application description can bean interaction within the current application. For example, the SMILdocument includes a hyperlink to that new application description. Theuser interaction to traverse that hyperlink causes the currentapplication to stop and to load the browser program with the newdescription that is fetched from the location pointed to by thehyperlink. Instead of stopping it is also possible that the currentapplication pauses or continues. This depends on the actual applicationdescription. The SMIL language provides for constructs to describe theintended behavior. It also depends on the resource capabilities of theplayer to what extent rendition remains feasible, but, for example, incase the hyperlink is adding an additional image, it can be feasiblethat the current application remains running.

Another cause of loading the browser program with a new applicationdescription can be an explicit user command to the browser program to doso. For example, the user interface provides for a way to enter the URLof that new SMIL document to be loaded. The user command to load the newdocument causes the current application to stop and to load the browserprogram with the new description that is fetched from the locationpointed to by the entered URL. Instead of stopping it is also possiblethat the current application pauses or continues. For example, the userwishes to surf around on the internet while keeping the applicationcontinuing in the background, e.g., only the sound is audible, or thevideo appears in a picture-in-picture like sub-window. This could havebeen initiated by the application in the first place, where a hyperlinkhas opened for displaying the web site of the studio that produced thedisc's movie. So, instead of entering explicitly the URL of a newlocation, the user could also have “clicked” a hyperlink from theadditionally loaded sites.

FIG. 2 illustrates presenting a document in a schematic way. Within stepS200 a user requests for displaying a web site in the setting of aWalled Garden. The content provider of the disc that is currently in theplayer, wishes to constrain the set of sites that the user may visitwhile using the disc. Within step S202, the browser program determinesif the requested site is within the walled garden, by checking a listcontaining the URLs of allowed sites that can be visited. The referenceto the Walled Garden list is stored on the disc, for example at alocation of the disc's file system. It can also be stored as part of adocument stored on the disc, where the document contains the applicationdescription. Multiple documents may reside on one disc, each carryinganother such reference. For example, the document may be a SMILdocument, a Java program class file, or a piece of ECMAScript as part ofan Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) document. In case of theSMIL example the reference could be represented as an XML fragment,e.g., as follows:<walledGarden ref=“http://studio.com/movie/disc/garden.1st”/>

In case of the Java or ECMAScript example the reference could berepresented as an API call, e.g., as follows:walledGarden.set(“http://studio.com/movie/disc/garden.1st”);

It should be noted that instead of providing a reference to a list, asin the above examples, the list itself can also be enumerated, or acombination of these. Also, the list itself can be stored on the disc,such that the reference points to a location on the disc or in thedocument, rather than to a location on the internet. When referencing alocation on the internet, flexibility can be obtained, since the listcan be maintained and be updated (remove stale URLs, add new ones). Thelist can also be made dynamic, e.g. be made dependent of privilegesacquired by the user.

If the site is within the walled garden list, the current applicationthat is being run by the player is not affected, i.e. continues playing,and step S204 is performed.

If the site is not within the walled garden list, either step S206, S212or step S214 is performed. As long as the browser program is loaded withthe application, i.e. is rendering the application, navigation outsidethe walled garden is prohibited by the browser.

Within step S204, the requested site is fetched and presented to theuser.

Within step S206, the user is informed that he or she tries to access asite that is not within the list of allowed sites and either step S212,S208, or S214 is performed. For example step S208 is performed, in thecase that the “forbidden” site is offered as a hyperlink in thecurrently displayed page.

Within step S208, a more user-friendly user interface is provided to theuser, indicating that the browser program doesn't display or offer thesite in the first place, based on the provided list of allowed sitesbecause of the loaded disc. In a dialog it asks the user whether hewishes to continue possibly at cost of ending the running application'spresentation.

Within step S210 the user's response is evaluated. If the user wishes tostay in the walled garden, i.e. the application's presentationcontinues, step S212 follows. If the user confirms to continue to accessthe “forbidden site”, step S214 follows.

Within step S212, the browser program refuses to display the requestedsite. The requested site is not offered to the user and the applicationcontinues running on the player.

Within step S214, the application is stopped because the user requesteda site outside the walled garden. Then, step S204 follows: the requesteddocument is fetched and presented to the user.

Steps S212 and S214 can be performed without informing the user what ishappening. This may give the user the impression that the player isbroken (because fetching does not succeed, or the applicationdiscontinues) and leading to complaints to the manufacturer. Therefore,it is better that the browser program informs the user that the site iscurrently inaccessible, because of the loaded disc. Therefore, in adialog it can ask the user whether he wishes to continue. The browserprogram can also skip this information to the user and/or conducting thedialog, and immediately continue to fetch the requested page. Forexample, the user may have set in a preference list available to theplayer that he always wishes to stay within the walled garden, e.g.following the path S206-S212. This saves the user additional interactionlike “button clicking”. Likewise, he or she may have set that thepresentation can be stopped, following the path straight to S214. In anycase, when the browser program leaves the Walled Garden to fetch anoutside page, it can stop the running application so as to obey theWalled Garden requirement by the application's or disc's producer.

A special situation is the case where the producer of disc doesn't wantto provide a Walled Garden restriction. In such situations it is likelythat the reference doesn't exist on the disc and a default playerbehavior will take over (being no restricted surfing). If a producerwishes to disable surfing at all, an explicit call to the Walled Gardenrestriction is needed, being a reference to an empty list. It is clearthat other definitions are conceivable to deal with these special casesof no or full restriction, as well as the definition of defaultbehavior.

The concept of Walled Garden also occurs in other use cases. Forexample, parental control is a form of Walled Garden, in which parentsrestrict the scope of sites their children are allowed to visit. Thesame mechanism can be used here. The parents set on the player the listof allowed sites, for example by entering a reference to a listmaintained by a corresponding service provider.

Walled Gardens can also be combined. For example, the Parental Controlcase can be combined with the disc's Walled Garden by intersecting thetwo lists.

In the above description the Walled Garden list is assumed to be anexhaustive listing of allowed sites and or pages. In the implementationthis can be realized by using other constructs such as denials. Sincethe number of internet sites is virtually unlimited, denials can beevaluated on a access-per-access basis: upon the user's request for asite the URL is checked for the denial (and not matched with the URLs inan existing list). Then, a Walled Garden list is provided containingthose internet sites that a user is not allowed to visit.

FIG. 3 illustrates a DVD player 316 comprising a system 300 according tothe invention in a schematic way. The system 300 comprises a processor302, DVD drive with appropriate DVD driver software 314, internetconnection with appropriate internet driver software 312 and a generalpurpose memory 304 that all communicate with the processor 302 throughsoftware bus 306. The memory 304 comprises computer readable code 308and 310. The computer readable code 308 is designed to translatedocuments into displayable format. This displayable format can forexample be displayed by a CRT display or plasma display. The computerreadable code 310 is designed to determine if the requested site to bedisplayed by a user is within the walled garden as previously described.The DVD driver software 314 is designed to read the information from DVDdisc 320. This information comprises the walled garden list and forexample a movie with its applications. The internet driver software 312enables connection of the system to the internet 322 such that a user isable to request for documents that reside on the world wide web to bedisplayed. The information on the DVD disc 320 can be read from sectors318 that are written. In stead of a DVD player, a DVD+RW (read write), aCD-I (interactive), BluDisc, Video-CD, etc. can be used too that supportinteractive navigation through the internet. It is also possible that aninteractive television program is received through a transport stream asdefined in the Multimedia Home Platform as available fromhttp://www.mhp.org. In this case, the Walled Garden list can be receivedthrough the transport stream or as comprised within a computer program(for example java program) that describes the interactive televisionprogram.

It should be noted that the above-mentioned embodiments illustraterather than limit the invention, and that those skilled in the art willbe able to design many alternative embodiments without departing fromthe scope of the appended claims. In the claims, any reference signsplaced between parentheses shall not be construed as limiting the claim.The word “comprising” does not exclude the presence of elements or stepsother than those listed in a claim. The word “a” or “an” preceding anelement does not exclude the presence of a plurality of such elements.The invention can be implemented by means of hardware comprising severaldistinct elements, and by means of a suitably programmed computer. Inthe system claims enumerating several means, several of these means canbe embodied by one and the same item of computer readable software orhardware. The mere fact that certain measures are recited in mutuallydifferent dependent claims does not indicate that a combination of thesemeasures cannot be used to advantage.

1. Method of presenting a document, the document being comprised withina collection of documents that can be presented to a user, the methodcomprising: requesting by the user for the document to be presented;determining if the document is present within a sub-collection of thecollection, the sub-collection comprising those documents, of thecollection of documents, that are allowed to be presented to the user;presenting the document to the user if the document is present withinthe sub-collection.
 2. Method according to claim 1, comprising readingthe sub-collection from a location.
 3. Method according to claim 2,wherein the location is one of an information carrier, an internet siteor a broadcast station.
 4. Method according to claim 2, comprising:playing an interactive presentation from the location; and continuingplaying the interactive presentation if the document, that the userrequested, is present within the sub-collection comprising thosedocuments that are allowed to be presented to the user.
 5. Methodaccording to claim 2, wherein the location comprises a reference to thesub-collection.
 6. System for presenting a document, the document beingcomprised within a collection of documents that can be presented to auser, the system comprising determining means conceived to determine ifthe document is present within a sub-collection of the collection, thesub-collection comprising those documents, of the collection ofdocuments, that are allowed to be presented to the user; and presentingmeans conceived to present the document, that the user requests to bepresented, if the document is present within the sub-collection. 7.System according to claim 6, comprising: reading means conceived to readthe sub-collection from an information carrier; and playing meansconceived to continue playing an interactive presentation if thedocument, that the user requested, is present within the sub-collectioncomprising those documents that are allowed to be presented to the user.8. Media player comprising the system according to claim
 6. 9.Information carrier for use in the media player according to claim 8,the information carrier comprising an interactive presentation and asub-collection comprising those documents that are allowed to bepresented to a user.
 10. Computer program product designed to performthe method according to any of the claims 1 to 5.